Dickenson County Archives - Virginia Business

SWVA projects recommended for $10M in federal grants

Four Southwest Virginia economic development projects have been recommended to receive a cumulative $10 million in federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grants, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, announced Monday.

The projects are on sites where coal was mined prior to 1977, the year the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed. This federal law, among other things, requires the land to be adequately reclaimed when mining ends.

Funding for the AMLER program comes through the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which approves the grants, and the Virginia Department of Energy administers funding for projects in the state.

“The AMLER program supports high impact projects that align with federal, state and local priorities to improve communities and foster economic development,” state Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, stated in a release. “This round of funding will provide necessary investments to bolster infrastructure and enhance recreational and commercial opportunities to ensure SWVA continues to be successful.”

Virginia’s recommended projects are:

Project Intersection, Wise County, $4.75 million
Richlands Electric Diversification Project, Tazewell County, $2 million
Cumberland Outdoor Recreation, Dickenson and Buchanan counties, $2.75 million
Project Wildcat, Wise County, $500,000

The funding for Project Intersection will go to build a second entryway into the industrial park, which has four remaining pads totaling about 70 acres available for development, according to Duane Miller, executive director for the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission.

The industrial park is owned by the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, or LPRIFA, which was created through legislation in 2019, and includes representatives from the counties of Dickenson, Lee, Scott and Wise and the City of Norton. Project Intersection is certified as a Tier 5 site, the highest level in the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Virginia Business Ready Sites Program tier system.

AMLER has previously provided more than $12 million to develop the industrial park, according to Tarah Kesterson, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Energy.

EarthLink, the Atlanta-based internet service provider owned by Trive Capital, celebrated the opening of a 30,000-square-foot facility at Project Intersection earlier this month.

“It’s going to be a premiere site,” Will Payne, managing partner of Coalfield Strategies, an economic development consulting firm focused on Southwest Virginia, said of Project Intersection.

Officials in the town of Richlands, which has provided electricity to businesses and citizens since 1922, requested AMLER funding after facing rate increases, according to a Aug. 15 news release from the Virginia Department of Energy. The money will go toward the construction of a natural gas-fired turbine and generator, a micro power plant capable of generating 5 megawatts of electricity — enough to serve the town’s 2,500 utility customers.

The Cumberland Outdoor Recreation project is the purchase by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources of “an easement of 12,900 acres on Nature Conservancy property in Buchanan and Dickenson counties,” according to the Virginia Department of Energy. The land will be used for recreation, including a new ATV trail and road improvements.

The funding for Project Wildcat will pay for a retaining wall around an abandoned mine site in Pound, according to Kesterson.

Virginia began receiving federal grant dollars for the AMLER program in 2017 and has recommended nearly 50 projects since then, including five projects announced in January. Six states and three tribes receive the federal funding.

Last week, the Appalachian Community Capital community development financial institution announced it had received a $500 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to start the Green Bank for Rural America, which plans to finance $1.6 billion in energy projects in the Appalachian region and other rural areas across the country.

Addiction recovery center set to open in Dickenson County

Kentucky-based Addiction Recovery Care is expanding its addiction recovery services into Virginia. Opening in Dickenson County in early to mid-2024, Wildwood Recovery Center, ARC’s first recovery center in the state, will provide treatment for substance use disorders in a residential program allowing individuals to stay for up to one year.

ARC’s mission goes beyond recovery, also providing job training, educational opportunities and post-treatment employment options.

“We have developed a very nimble training and education division inside the organization, and so we can meet with an employer who has labor needs and we can tailor training programs to meet those needs, and we can supply employees to them,” ARC President Matt Brown says.

ARC plans to offer skilled trades and vocational training such as welding, carpentry and culinary arts at the center.

Dickenson County Economic Development Director Dana Cronkhite says the site of the recovery center was intentional, located across the road from the Red Onion Industrial Park, which is set to be completed around the same time. The Dickenson County IDA hopes to leverage ARC’s workforce training programs when marketing the industrial site.

“The Dickenson County leadership and Board of Supervisors and Industrial Development Authority recognize the correlation between substance use disorder and the deficits in our workforce, and this is our way to try to work towards correcting that issue,” Cronkhite says.

The center has 112 beds for men, and ARC has announced plans to add a women’s center in the county later. The men’s center will create 50 jobs in the county, including nurses, clinicians and peer support specialists, as well as daily support staff such as certified maintenance workers and kitchen staff.

Peer support specialists use their firsthand recovery experience to help others who are in and seeking recovery from substance use disorders. In Kentucky and Virginia, individuals who have been in recovery for a year and meet requirements can become certified peer support specialists and are then eligible for employment with ARC.

Dickenson County is using $250,000 from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority to purchase furniture, fixtures and equipment for the center. Contractors were on track to finish construction at the facility by the end of 2023. Occupancy certifications and licensing and credentialing must be obtained before ARC can begin accepting clients at the center. That process, Brown says, will begin once construction is complete.

5 SWVA projects recommended for $9.5M in federal grants

Five Southwest Virginia economic development projects have been recommended to receive a cumulative $9.35 million in federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grants, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith announced Thursday.

The projects are on sites where coal was mined before 1977. Funding for the federal AMLER Program comes through the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, which has final approval over recommended projects. The Virginia Department of Energy administers AMLER funding for projects in the state.

“Repurposing land to create jobs and grow communities is a wonderful benefit of the AMLER program,” Youngkin said in a statement, “and we are excited to see these developments create opportunities in our Southwest communities.”

The five projects are:

Data Center Ridge, Wise County, $3 million
Haysi High School Site Redevelopment, Dickenson County, $2 million
Southern Gap Office Park Building, Buchanan County, $1.95 million
Norton Light Industrial Building, Wise County, $1.2 million
Russell County Access Bridge, Russell County, $1.2 million.

The Data Center Ridge project is located on a 4,000-acre industrial site in Wise County known as the Bullitt site. The project will convert a 400-acre previously mined property into a 1-gigawatt, multitenant data center campus. It’s part of a planned clean energy development that could attract up to $8.25 billion in capital investments, resulting from a land development agreement between Energy DELTA Lab, Dallas-based Fortune 100 energy company Energy Transfer and Wise County. The AMLER funding would support site and infrastructure development for Data Center Ridge.

Funding for the Haysi High School site redevelopment project would support infrastructure development and land preparation for retail development. The Southern Gap Office Park project includes building a two-story commercial office building in the regional office park. The Norton project is constructing a spec building in the Project Intersection industrial park, where Atlanta-based high-speed internet service provider EarthLink is building a 28,000-square-foot customer support center. The Russell County bridge will add infrastructure supporting the Project Reclaim industrial park, which previously received close to $5 million in AMLER funding.

Virginia began receiving federal grant dollars for the AMLER program in 2017 and has recommended more than 40 projects since then. The state is one of six that receives AMLER grant funding.

“The AMLER Program, federal funding I championed, provides our communities in Southwest Virginia with opportunities to reuse old mine lands for new and exciting purposes. AMLER projects have contributed to job creation, economic growth and environmental renewal in the coalfields, improving the quality of life for residents in the surrounding areas,” Griffith, a Republican who represents Virginia’s 9th Congressional District, said in a statement.

Dickenson County to develop small industrial park

Work will start on a new industrial park on the site of a former strip mine in Dickenson County in late summer or early fall, says Dana Cronkhite, the county’s economic development director.

The Virginia Department of Energy announced in January that the county’s Industrial Development Authority will receive $869,584 from the federal Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) program to establish the Red Onion Industrial Park. The Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority has contributed about $3 million toward the project since 2013. The Appalachian Regional Commission also allocated $500,000 in 2020.

Many Virginia counties are taking steps to prep industrial properties to lure businesses that want to build quickly.

Due to its hilly topography, Dickenson County has limited property that can be swiftly developed for industry. “The flat land around here is either on top of a ridge somewhere that God made or was made through mining,” explains Freddie Mullins, the IDA’s attorney.

The industrial park property, which the authority acquired in 2014 for $99,410, is about 100 acres; however, a lot of that land is hillside, Cronkhite notes. Developers plan to grade three pads of 15, 10 and 5 acres each on property that’s suitably level.

Construction will include building on-site access roads and structures to control stormwater and sediment, and installing redundant broadband fiber so if one provider has an outage, data can continue flowing.

The industrial park should be build-ready by April 2024, Cronkhite anticipates, and the site’s planners think the park could be a fit for businesses ranging from data centers to solar farms.

No matter what type of business comes, Cronkhite points out, “it’s going to be smaller industry because the pads are not ginormous.” (By comparison, Pittsylvania County’s Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill has a 200-acre graded pad.)

Across the street from the industrial park, construction on the Wildwood Recovery Center — a residential addiction recovery facility that’s a joint project between Dickenson’s IDA and Kentucky-based Addiction Recovery Care — should be finished around the same time as Red Onion, according to Cronkhite.

The county would like to develop workforce training for the center’s graduates in hopes that they can work at the businesses that build facilities at Red Onion, Cronkhite says. “We’re going to have a workforce across the road, literally.”

Spearhead Trails aims for recreational shooting boost

The Southwest Regional Recreation Authority (SRRA) will use a $750,000 federal grant to further develop its Spearhead Trails Sportsman Adventures Complex in Dickenson County.

A ribbon-cutting for the 150-acre complex in Clintwood was held in August 2022, when the complex had two archery ranges, plus shooting ranges for pistols, rifles, skeet and trap, and a clay shooting course with nine stations.

The SRRA, which was established by the General Assembly in 2008 to develop and manage Spearhead Trails as an adventure tourism destination, is using the grant to complete a barn and construct a 120-foot-by-250-foot multipurpose building for indoor archery classes and tournaments. It will also add three to six stations to its clay shooting course, erect fishing piers on two ponds, build a maintenance and store facility and buy 10 golf carts patrons can rent, says Melissa Rose, the authority’s executive director.

The funds will also be used to meet a condition set by a property owner who granted the complex a permanent easement to two acres on the condition that the SRRA disassemble a hand-hewn log cabin and relocate it off the complex’s land. “We will have it put back together as close as we can and will utilize it in some manner,” Rose says.

She expects all grant-funded work to be completed in about two years, depending on availability of materials. Future projects will include building a breezeway connecting the barn and multipurpose building.

A 2019 study on the potential economic impact of a Spearhead Trails shooting and archery range complex said it could capture residents’ spending at ranges outside the area and attract current and new Spearhead Trails users. It estimated that 50 to 147 people would use the range noncompetitively daily, while statewide or larger competitive events could draw 400 to 600 people per day.

The study also estimated the total annual economic impact could range from $1.5 million to $4.6 million and that it could support 32 full-time-equivalent jobs in the region. It added that Spearhead Trails users might also use the shooting complex and vice versa.

The complex is already drawing locals and people from other states, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, says Rita Surratt, Dickenson County’s tourism director.

“It’s given us a new market to target,” she says. “We’re really happy to see it happening.”

SWVA projects recommended for $10.6M in federal funds

Eight Southwest Virginia economic development projects totaling $10.6 million have been recommended for federal funding under Virginia’s Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization grant program, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith announced Friday.

Referred to the federal Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement for approval, the projects include $2.347 million to develop a 23.5 acre build-ready pad at the Chip Mill Industrial Site in Dickenson County; $2 million to leverage previously mined properties to support the Energy DELTA Lab in Wise County; and another $2 million to create campsites and connector trails at Devil’s Bathtub in Wise and Scott counties.

Under the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Virginia already expects to receive $22.7 million in federal funds to reclaim abandoned mine lands during the next 15 years. The Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization, or AMLER, grant program is separate from that in that it seeks to advance economic development opportunities from the development and repurposing of abandoned mine lands. Virginia was one of nine states and tribal programs picked by Congress to receive $10 million in fiscal 2020 under the program. Will Clear, deputy director of the state’s Department of Energy, told Virginia Business that the commonwealth is slated to receive $13 million in federal funds for fiscal 2023.

Other projects recommended for funding include:

$525,000 to expand manufacturing at medical supplier Bird Dog Distributors, in Dickenson County;
$750,000 to create a sporting complex on abandoned mine land in Dickenson County, including archery, rifle/pistol and shotgun shooting ranges;
$1.6 million to create a pad-ready housing development site in Wise County;
$500,000 for the expansion of Maine Five Distributors LLC’s sewing operations in Buchanan County; and
$925,000 for workforce center upgrades and program expansion of Mountain Empire Community College’s Center for Workforce and Innovation of Appalachia in Wise County.

“These projects selected support our goals of immediate job creation and the development of new business-ready sites that will be the fuel that drives new business investment in these Southwest Virginia communities,” Youngkin said in a statement. “There is great innovation in these proposals that will make Virginia the best place to live, work and raise a family.”

Clear told Virginia Business Friday that he expects a response from the federal mine office on the funding in the first or second quarters of 2023.

SWVA initiative seeks to attract remote workers

Project Fuse, a regional cooperative initiative to make Southwest Virginia the location of choice for remote employment, launched Friday with the release of a playbook to attract businesses.

“The global business community seeks options for both attracting the employees they want and managing their operating costs,” Will Payne, managing partner of Coalfield Strategies LLC and campaign lead for InvestSWVA, said in a statement. “Companies need rural community partners who can help them with teleworking and remote working, as Project Fuse explains.”

The Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority (LPRIF) commissioned the playbook — developed over the last four months — with support from the state’s GO Virginia economic development initiative and the U.S. Economic Development Administration. InvestSWVA brought project members together.

“The global pandemic accelerated more than a workplace shift and the remote work opportunity,” Duane Miller, executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission, chief sponsor of the project, said in a statement. “It has opened a new door into diversifying our economy in Virginia’s Southwest. Given the quality of life we can offer and the support our economic development teams can provide to companies, we commissioned a look into how to match our assets to the opportunity.”

The report includes case studies like Rochester, New York-based medical records company eHealth Technologies Inc.’s establishment of a hub location in Duffield in 2020. Company management has reported lower turnover and higher levels of satisfaction among its area employees in the area. The partnership between Mountain Empire Community College and eHealth Technologies that provides the company tailored training processes also contributed to the location’s success, according to the report.

The study identified four opportunities for LPRIFA localities, which include the city of Norton and the counties of Dickenson, Lee, Scott and Wise.

Employers are offering support for living remotely and using coworking spaces.
Companies’ real estate needs have changed.
Customer service via teleworkers is growing in sophistication and pay scales.
Companies are looking for partnerships with communities to find and retain quality employees as they compete in a tight labor market.

To take advantage of these opportunities, localities need to meet several conditions: ubiquitous internet connectivity and reliable transportation networks; downtown office buildings with meeting space; affordable, diverse housing options in walkable areas; and an established network with academic partners.

As part of meeting those conditions, localities need to develop their downtowns and deliver universal internet connectivity ahead of schedule, the playbook states.

InvestSWVA is a public-private business research, attraction and marketing campaign launched under the umbrella of the Virginia Tobacco Revitalization Commission, which was created by the General Assembly in 1999 to promote economic growth and development in formerly tobacco-dependent communities.

Dickenson IDA gets $1.1M loan to purchase former mill site

The Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority received a loan of up to $1.175 million from the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority to purchase the former Mountain Forest Products mill site, a 433-acre property in Dickenson and Wise counties, for future economic development.

The site, which is adjacent to the IDA’s Red Onion industrial site, also includes three steel-frame buildings that total 30,063 square feet, according to a news release last week from VCEDA.

“The IDA saw a noticeable and worrisome need for high-quality industrial sites that could be made ready for immediate development,” Dickenson County IDA Chairman Larry Yates said in a statement. “Recently steps have been taken to ensure the needed infrastructure, electrical, water, sewer and broadband would be extended to those areas.”

The chairman of Dickenson’s Board of Supervisors, Josh Evans, said in a statement that the county plans to use the property to “aggressively recruit high-paying employers to locate here. We are committed to bringing jobs to Dickenson County.”

SW Va. aims to attract data centers via regional tax pact

As part of an effort to entice data centers to locate in the region, Southwest Virginia leaders announced Tuesday a joint agreement to set what will be Virginia’s lowest regional property tax rate on data center equipment.

The localities comprising the Lonesome Pine Regional Industrial Facilities Authority — Dickenson, Lee, Scott and Wise counties and Norton — have entered into an agreement to each establish a tax rate of 24 cents per $100 on data center equipment. By comparison, Henrico County slashed its data center equipment tax rate to 40 cents on every $100 in March 2017 in order to attract the $1.75 billion Facebook data center, which opened last year at the county’s White Oak Technology Park in Sandston. At the time, Henrico’s was the lowest such tax rate in the state.

Now, through its Project Oasis initiative, the region hopes to leverage the area’s underground water in former coal mines to provide free geothermal cooling as a significant savings tool for data centers, which typically rack up high HVAC utility and maintenance bills to keep equipment from overheating. The block tax rate is intended as an additional incentive to the region’s offer of available and cheap land, geothermal cooling and workforce readiness and development.

According to the October 2020 Project Oasis study commissioned by InvestSWVA, the region is well-positioned for data centers. The study states that one large data center could result in more than 2,000 jobs and $50 million in annual economic activity for the region.

That same study states that six sites in the area have met the general criteria to locate a large, 36-megawatt hyperscale data center, and that four additional sites could be suitable for a smaller data center of up to 10 megawatts. Two sites have geothermal cooling opportunities through the utilization of 51-degree water contained in pools on the mining properties. One additional site has underground space that provides a consistent 55-degree temperature.

Tuesday’s announcement builds upon the Virginia General Assembly’s passage last week of Senate Bill 1423, which reduces the job creation requirement necessary for data centers to qualify for the retail sales and use tax exemption in a distressed locality from 25 to 10 jobs. The bill also lowers the new capital investment threshold from $150 million to $70 million.

Speaking during a virtual news conference Tuesday, Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, said that these new incentives will help attract more data centers like the existing Mineral Gap Data Center Campus in Wise, where Ashburn-based DP Facilities has a highly secure data center for government and health care clients. “We’re not reinventing the wheel,” Kilgore said. “We’re just building on our success.”

Kilgore and other regional leaders participating in the news conference said that while the reduced income tax rate would help attract data centers, localities will still reap the benefit of real estate taxes. Project Oasis’ projected model data center would involve a $464.1 million economic development investment, with an equipment cost of $201.6 million and a building cost of $262.5 million.

As for a potential local workforce, R. Kent Hill, managing principal of Richmond-based OnPoint Development Strategies, said that students from Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap are trained with adaptable skill sets that could be utilized by data center employers.

“If we were to get a large data center to select [a site] in the region, they would have a custom-tailored workforce or training program that would hit the road fairly quickly,” Hill said, noting that some data centers jobs have six-figure salaries.

Hill added that each of the sites under consideration has been examined for viability, including for power and connectivity capabilities. Fiber-optic internet either already exists at the locations or could be extended “fairly easily.”

As for the block tax rate agreed to by the localities, final action will take place this spring when they formally adopt the terms of the memorandum of understanding through their annual budgetary process.

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$1.2M grant approved for Dickenson County industrial site

A grant for up to $1.2 million in infrastructure improvements to the Red Onion Industrial Site in Dickenson County was recently approved by Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority board.

The funds, which will be given to the Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority, will be used to help finance site grading, site development, access road construction and storm drainage improvements at the Red Onion site, which is also known as the Coalfield Regional Industrial Park. The funds will also be used for the extension of utilities, including water, sewer, electric, natural gas and broadband to the property.

“Infrastructure availability is a key piece in the marketing of an industrial site to a prospective new business,” said Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA executive director/general counsel. “A site equipped with roads, storm drainage, utilities, natural gas and broadband — ready and waiting for a potential new business — provides additional incentive for a prospect eyeing many different pieces of property to ultimately make the decision to choose the property which already has many of its basic needs met.”

Created by the General Assembly in 1988, the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority is an organization that provides funding for regional economic development projects from a percentage of the coal and natural gas severance taxes paid by coal and natural gas companies operating in the region. Located in Southwest Virginia, the region includes Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, and Wise counties and the city of Norton.

“The funding to develop the Red Onion Industrial Site will give the IDA a prime piece of marketable property,” said Larry Yates, Dickenson County IDA chairman. “This opportunity is one of the last pieces of the puzzle.”

Yates noted the property will offer redundant broadband services, which he said will make the site more attractive to data center businesses.

“The data center industry is a very competitive, up-and-coming market,” Yates said. “The Red Onion site is a multilayer site and could be the home of more than one industry. The IDA looks forward to bringing more job opportunities to the residents of Dickenson County, as well as to surrounding counties.”